Rhodesia

Chapter Seven

Nick walked back to Meikles. No use hailing a cab and giving the police another time fix. Barnes would decide he should be questioned about the death in the railway building, and a long stroll is a flexible time unit.

He bought a newspaper as he went through the lobby. In his room he stripped, put cold water on the two-inch slice across his chest, and inspected the card case and wallet he had taken from the man. They told him little except for Stash's name and an address in Bulawayo. Would Alan Wilson have sent him? When you protect millions you get rough, yet he couldn't believe back-stabbing was Wilson's style.

That left Judas — or "Mike Bor," or someone else at THB. Never discounting Gus Boyd and Ian Masters and even Pieter van Prez, Johnson, Howe, Maxwell... Nick sighed. He put the packet of banknotes from the wallet with his own money without counting them, cut up the cases, burned what he could in an ashtray, and flushed the rest down the toilet.

He searched the cloth of his coat, shirt, and undershirt carefully. The only blood was from his own knife scratch. He rinsed the undershirt and shirt in cold water and tore them into scraps after removing the collar labels. As he unwrapped a clean shirt he looked affectionately and regretfully at Hugo, strapped to his bare forearm. Then he called Masters' office and arranged for a car.

It wouldn't do to discard the coat; Barnes might legitimately ask about it. He found a tailor shop far from the hotel and asked to have it mended. He drove a few miles toward Selous, admiring the countryside, and turned back toward town. The expansive groves of fruit trees looked exactly like parts of California, with long irrigation lines and giant sprayers drawn by tractors. Once he saw a horse-drawn spray cart and stopped to watch the blacks operate it. He supposed their trade was doomed, like the cotton-pickers in Dixie. An odd tree caught his eye and he used his guidebook to identify it — a candelabra, or giant euphorbia.

Barnes was waiting in the hotel lobby. The questioning was thorough but led nowhere. Did he know a Stash Foster? How had he returned from Tillbourne's office to his hotel? What time had he arrived? Did he know anyone who belonged to the Zimbabwe political parties?

Nick felt amused because the only completely honest answer he gave was to the last question. "No, I don t think so. Now tell me — why the questions?"

"A man was stabbed to death at the railway offices today. At about the time you were there."

Nick put on his astonished look. "Not — Roger? Oh no..."

"No, no. The man I asked you if you knew. Foster."

"Care to describe him?"

Barnes did. Nick shrugged. Barnes departed. But Nick permitted himself no elation. There went a smart man.

He returned the car to Masters and flew in a DC-3, via Kariba, to Main Camp at the Wankie National Park. He was pleased to find at Main Camp a thoroughly modern resort The manager accepted him as one of the escorts for the Edman Tour that would arrive in the morning, and installed him in a comfortable, two-bedroom chalet — "No charge for your first night."

Nick was beginning to appreciate the escort business.

Although Nick had read about Wankie National Park he was amazed. He knew its five thousand square miles held seven thousand elephants, great herds of buffalo, as well as rhino, zebra, giraffe, leopard, antelope in infinite variety, and dozens of other species he had not bothered to memorize. Yet Main Camp was as comfortable as the products of civilization could make it, with an air strip where CAA DC-3s were met by the latest model cars and the innumerable microbuses, striped black and white like mechanical zebras.

As he strolled back toward the main lodge he saw Bruce Todd, Ian Masters' man — "a soccer star" — standing near the entrance.

He greeted Nick, "Hello, I heard you arrived. Enjoying it?"

"Magnificent. We re both early-"

"I'm a sort of advance scout Checking the rooms, cars, all that. Feel like a sundowner?"

"Good idea." They strolled to the cocktail lounge, two bronzed young men who drew women's eyes.

Over whiskies and sodas Nick's body relaxed, but his mind was active. It was logical for Masters to send an "advance man." It was also possible, even probable, that Salisbury athlete Todd had a connection with George Barnes and Rhodesian Security Forces. Certainly Barnes would think it worthwhile to put a tail on "Andrew Grant" for a while; he was a prime suspect in Foster's strange death.

He thought of those carloads shipped daily from the THB mine complex. The waybills would be meaningless. Perhaps chrome or nickel ore with gold hidden in any car they chose? That would be clever and practical. But carloads? They must be dripping with the stuff! He tried to remember the shipping weights of asbestos. He doubted that he had read about them, for he could not recall them.

Sanctions — hah! He held no definite opinion on the right or wrong of them or the political issues involved, but the old, bitter fact applied: Where there is enough involved, self-interest rules. It was probable that Wilson, Masters, Todd, and the others knew exactly what THB was doing, and approved. Perhaps even collected a fee. One thing was certain, in this situation he could only absolutely rely on himself. All others were suspect.

And the killers Judas was supposed to be dispatching, the efficient assassin force he could dispatch all over Africa? That fit in with the man. It meant more money in his pocket and it helped him get rid of a lot of unwanted enemies. Someday, his gun slingers would come even more handy. Someday... Yeah, with the new Nazis.

Then he thought of Booty and Johnson and van Prez. They would not fit the pattern. You could not quite imagine them moving-only-for-the-money. Nazism? That was really out. And Mrs. Ryerson? A woman like her could enjoy the good life in Charlottesville — riding to hounds, social affairs, admired, invited everywhere. Yet, like a few other in-place AXE agents he had met, she isolated herself here. When it came to it, what was his own motivation? IATA had offered him twenty thousand a year to supervise their security operation, yet he roamed the world for less. All you could tell yourself was that you wanted to put your ounce of weight on the right side of the scales. Fine — but who says which side is right? A man could...

"...the two waterholes nearby are Nyamandhlovu and Guvulala Pans," Todd was saying. Nick had been listening carelessly. "You can sit high up and watch the animals come in for their evening drinks. We'll go there tomorrow. The girls will like the steenbok. They look like Disney's Bambi."

"Point them out to Teddy Northway," Nick said, and was amused at the pink that rose up Todd's tanned neck. "Is there a spare car I can use?"

"Not actually. We have two sedans of our own and we use the microbuses with a guide for the guests. You can't drive around here after dusk, you know. And don't let the guests out of the cars. It can get a bit sticky with some of the livestock. The lions sometimes appear in prides of fifteen or so."

Nick concealed his disappointment They were less than a hundred miles from THB's property. The road from this side did not quite reach it, but he assumed there might be unmarked trails over which he could put a car or, if necessary, walk. He had a small compass and a mosquito net and a plastic poncho so small they fitted in a pocket His small map was five years old but it would do.

They went into the dining room and had eland steaks, which Nick found excellent. Later they danced with some very pretty girls, and Nick excused himself just before eleven. Whether or not he was able to explore THB from this point, he had lit enough fuses for one of the unknown explosive forces to let loose very soon. It was a good time to stay in condition.

He joined Bruce Todd for an early breakfast and they drove the fourteen miles to Dett Station. The long shiny train disgorged a horde of people, including five or six tour groups in addition to their own. Two of the groups had to wait for cars. Masters was wise to have his man on the spot. They had the two sedans, a microbus, and a Volvo station wagon.

The girls were bright and beaming, chatty about their adventures. Nick helped Gus with the baggage. "Smooth trip?" he asked the senior escort.

"They re happy. This is a special train." Gus grunted with a heavy bag. "Not that the regular ones aren't a helluva lot better than the Penn Central!"

After a hearty "early tea" they drove, in the same vehicles, into the rugged bundu. A Wankie guide drove the little striped bus, and at the manager's request, because he was short of men, Gus and Bruce drove sedans and Nick took the wheel of the Volvo wagon. They stopped at Kausche Pan, the Mtoa Dam, and several times on the narrow road to watch herds of game.

Nick admitted it was astonishing. The instant you left Main Camp you entered another world, harsh, primitive, threatening, beautiful. He had drawn Booty, Ruth Crossman, and Janet Olson for his car, and he enjoyed the company. The girls used hundreds of feet of movie film on ostrich, baboons, and ververt monkeys. They groaned sympathetically when they saw lions tearing at the carcass of a downed zebra.

Near Tshompani Dam a helicopter droned over them, looking out of place. It should have been a pterodactyl. Shortly afterward the little caravan came together, sharing cold beer that Bruce produced from a portable cooler, then, as tour groups will, they drifted apart. The microbus stopped to view a great herd of buffalo, the sedan's occupants were photographing wildebeest, and, at the girls* urging. Nick rolled the wagon down a long, curving loop of the road which might have been in the Arizona hills during a dry sprine.

Ahead, at the foot of the hill, he saw a truck drawn up at an intersection where roads, if he remembered the map, branched off to Wankie, Matetsi, and back to Main Camp via another route. The truck was marked in large letters Wankie Research Project. As they left the slope he saw a panel delivery wagon stopped two hundred feet along the northeastern road. It was lettered the same way. Odd — he hadn't noticed the park administration plastering their name on everything. They liked to leave an impression of naturalness. Odd.

He slowed. A stocky man stepped out from the truck and waved a red flag. Nick remembered the construction projects he had seen in Salisbury — they used warning flags, but he could not, at the moment, recall seeing a red one. Odd, again.

He sniffed, his nostrils flaring like those of the beasts around them at the scent of the unusual that can mean danger. He slowed, squinted, watched the flagman who reminded him of someone. Who? Foster the baboon! There was no precise facial resemblance, except for high cheekbones, but the simian way he moved, the arrogance, and yet a certain uprightness with the flag. Workers handle them casually, not like pennants at a Swiss banner meet.

Nick took his foot from the brake and hit the gas.

Booty, sitting in front beside him, yelped, "Hey — see the flag, Andy?"

There wasn't enough road to miss the man, the low bluff came down on one side and the truck blocked the narrow passage. Nick aimed for him and blew a single horn blast The man waved the flag madly, then jumped aside as the wagon hurtled past, over the spot where he had stood. In the back seat the girls gasped. Booty said, in a high pitch, "Hey-y-y. Andy!"

Nick stared at the truck's cab as he went by. The driver was a burly, surly-looking type. If you picked a norm for a Rhodesian, he wouldn't be it. Pale white skin, hostility glaring from the face. Nick caught a glimpse of the man beside him as he sat up in surprise when the Volvo speeded up instead of stopping. Chinese! And although the single, out-of-focus picture in AXE's files was a poor long shot, he could be Si Kalgan.

As they raced past the sedan delivery the rear door opened and a man started to scramble out, dragging something that could be a weapon. The Volvo roared past before he could identify the item but the hand that came out of the front held a large pistol. No doubting that.

Nick's stomach went cold. There was a quarter-mile of weaving road ahead before the first dip and safety. The girls! Would they shoot?

"Get down, girls. On the floor. Now!"

Bang! They were shooting.

Bang! He praised the Volvo's carburetor, it sucked the juice and fed out power without a wobble. He thought one of those shots had hit the body but it might be his imagination or a road bump. He guessed that the man in the small truck had fired twice and then got out to steady his aim. Nick hoped fervently he was a poor marksman.

Bang!

There was a slight wider spot in the road and Nick used it to weave the car. They were really rolling now.

Bang! Fainter, but you couldn't outrun bullets. Bang!

Perhaps the bastard had used his last slug. Bang!

The Volvo whizzed over the dip like a boy racing into a lake for his first plunge of spring.

Rub-a-du-du-du. Nick gasped. The man in the back of the sedan delivery had been dragging a submachine gun. He must have fumbled it in his surprise. They were over the knoll.

The road ahead was a long, serpentine down-curve with a warning sign at the bottom. He accelerated half the way down, then hit the brake. They must be doing seventy-five but he did not change his eyes' focus to look at the meter. How fast would that delivery truck roll? If it was a good one or souped-up, they would be sitting ducks in the Volvo if it caught up. The big truck was no threat — yet.

The big truck certainly was no threat, but Nick could not know that. It was Judas' own design, with waist-high armor all round, a 460-horsepower engine, and heavy machine guns fore and aft with a full 180 degrees of fire through ports normally hidden by panels.

In its racks were submachine guns, grenades, and rifles with sniperscopes. But, like the tanks Hitler first sent into Russia, it was just too damn good for the job. It was hard to maneuver and on narrow roads couldn't average more than fifty miles an hour because the turns slowed it. The Volvo was out of sight before it moved.

The sedan delivery was another matter. It was souped-up and the driver, полу snarling at Krol beside him as they got rolling, was a hot man with horsepower. The windscreen, as the windshield was listed in local parts catalogs, had been cleverly split and hinged so that the right-hand half could be folded in for clear observation ahead — or use as a firing port Krol crouched down and opened it, holding his Machine Pistol 44 back over his shoulder temporarily, then bringing it up to the opening. He had fired a few rounds with a heavier Skoda, but switched to the 7.92 in the cramped quarters. Anyway, he prided himself on his skill with the burp gun.

They roared over the hillock in the road and down the incline on bouncing springs. All they saw of the Volvo was a cloud of dust and a vanishing shape. "Go," Krol snapped. "I'll hold fire till we close."

The driver was a tough city Croat who had named himself Bloch after joining the Germans when he was sixteen. Young or not, he had such a vicious record for persecuting his own people that he retreated with his Wehrmacht buddies all the way to Berlin. A clever one, he survived. He was a good driver and he handled the souped-up vehicle with finesse. They flashed down the grade, cornered smoothly, and gained on the Volvo on a long straightaway that led toward a line of jagged hills.

"We'll catch them," Bloch said confidently. "We've got the speed."

Nick was having the same thought — They'll catch us. He watched the sedan delivery in the rearview mirror on a long straightaway as it slid out of the turn, fishtailed a little as it straightened, and picked up speed like a big bullet. There was an experienced driver and a very good engine — against the Volvo with an experienced driver and a good standard engine. The outcome was predictable. He used every bit of skill and daring he possessed to retain every inch that separated the two cars, which was now less than a quarter-mile.

The road threaded its way through the brown-sand, mixed-green landscape, bending around bluffs, skirting dry watercourses, crossing or weaving through hills. It was no longer a modern road, although a well-graded, serviceable one. It seemed to Nick for an instant that he had been here before, and then he knew why. The terrain and the situation were a duplicate of the chase scenes he had enjoyed as a boy at the movie serials — the Saturday cliff-hangers. They were usually made in California, in countryside just like this.

He had the feel of the Volvo nicely now. He whipped it over a stone bridge and made an easy, sliding turn to the right that used every bit of road to avoid losing any more speed than absolutely necessary. Around the next turn he passed one of the microbuses. He hoped it met the sedan delivery at the bridge and delayed it.

Booty had kept the girls quiet, as Nick observed and appreciated, but now that they were out of sight of their pursuers Janet Olson opened up. "Mr. Grant! What's happened? Were they shooting at us really?"

For an instant Nick considered telling them that it was all part of the park's entertainment, like the fake holdups of the stagecoaches and railroad trains in "frontier town" amusement attractions, then thought better of it. They should know it was serious, so that they could duck or run.

"Bandits," he said, which was close enough.

"Well, I'll be damned," Ruth Crossman said without a quiver in her smooth voice. Only the expletive, which normally she would never have used, betrayed her excitement. Stout gal, Nick thought.

"Could it be part of — the revolution?" Booty asked.

"Sure," Nick said. 'It'll be popping up all over this place sooner or later, but I'm sorry for us if it's sooner."

"It was so — planned" Booty said.

"Well planned, with only a few holes. Lucky we found some."

"How did you guess they were fakes?"

"Those trucks were a little too pat. The big signs. The flag. All so methodical and logical. And did you notice how that guy handled the flag? Like he was leading a parade instead of out working on a hot day."

Janet said from the back, "They're not in sight."

"That bus may have slowed them at the bridge," Nick answered. "You'll see them on the next straightaway. There's about fifty miles of this road ahead of us and I don't look for much help. Gus and Bruce were too far behind us to know what happened."

He zipped past a jeep rolling placidly in their direction, occupied by an elderly couple. They shot through a narrow defile and emerged on a wide, barren plain ringed by hills. The floor of the small valley was smeared with abandoned coal workings, looking like the sad parts of the Colorado mine country before the foliage grew back.

"What... what will we do?" Janet asked timidly. "Keep quiet and let him drive and think," Booty ordered.

Nick was thankful for that. He had Wilhelmina and fourteen shells. The plastique and fuses were in his underbelt but that would take time and the right location and he couldn't count on either.

Several of the old mine roads offered a chance to loop and attack, but with a pistol against a quick-firer and the girls in the car, that was out. The truck had not emerged into the valley yet; they must have been slowed at the bridge. He unbuckled his belt and down-zipped his fly.

Booty quipped, with just a slight quiver in the words, "Talk about the time and place!"

Nick grinned. He hitched the flat khaki belt around, unhooked it, and pulled it free. "Take that. Booty. Look in the pockets next to the buckle. Find a flat black thing that looks like plastic."

"I've got one. What is it?"

"Explosive. We may not get a chance to use it, but let's be ready. Now go along to the pocket that doesn't have a black block in it. You'll find some pipe cleaners. Hand them to me."

She obeyed. He felt with his fingers for a "pipe cleaner" without the telltale end knob that distinguished the electrical thermo-detonators from the fuses. He selected a fuse. "Put the rest back." She did. "Take this one and feel around the edge of the block with your fingers for a little wax blob. It covers a hole if you look closely."

"Got it"

"Poke the end of this wire into the hole. Penetrate the wax. Careful, don't bend the wire or you can ruin it."

He couldn't look, the road was twisting through the old mine dumps. She said, "Got it It went in almost an inch."

"Right. There's a cap in there. The wax was to keep a chance spark from getting in. Don't smoke, girls."

They all assured him nicotine was their last thought right now.

Nick cursed the fact that they were going too fast to stop as they whizzed past a collection of weatherbeaten buildings that would have suited his purpose. They were varied in size and shape, had windows, and were reached by several gravel roads. Then they dropped into a small depression with a sag and lurch of springs, passed an evil-looking pool of yellow-green water, and shot up into more of the old mine slag heaps.

There were more buildings ahead. Nick said, "We've got to take chances. I'm going near a building. When I tell you to go, you go! Everybody got it?"

He guessed the strained, choking sounds meant yes. The reckless speed and realization were reaching their imaginations. Fifty miles of this would develop terror. He saw the truck pop into the valley, a bug moving into the unfertile, arid-looking landscape. It was about a half-mile away. He braked, jab-jab-press...

A wide side road, probably a truck exit, led off to the next group of buildings. He skidded into it and gunned the two hundred yards to the structures. The truck would have no trouble following their cloud of dust.

The first buildings were storehouses, offices, and shops.

;He supposed that in the old days the operation had to be self-contained — there were about twenty of them. He braked again on what looked like the abandoned street of a much-abused ghost town, drew up at what might have been a store. He yelled, "Come on!"

He ran to the side of the building, found a window, high-kicked in the glass, cleaning the shards from the frame as best he could.

"In!" He lifted Ruth Crossman through the opening, then the other two. "Stay down out of sight. Hide if you can find a place."

He ran back to the Volvo and drove on through the settlement, slowing as he passed rank after rank of drab cottages, undoubtedly once the quarters of the white workers. The natives would have had a compound in the bush of thatch-roofed huts. When the road started to turn he stopped, looked back. The truck had turned in off the main road and was picking up speed toward him.

He waited, wishing he had something to armor the rear seat with — and time to do it. Even a few bales of cotton or hay would make your back less itchy. When he was sure they had seen him he went on along the road that led up a winding incline toward what must have been workings; it looked like an artificial hill with a small tipple and shaft house at the top.

A broken line of rusty narrow-gauge tracks paralleled the road, crossing it several times. He reached the top of the artificial hill and grunted. The only way down was the way he had come. That was good, it would make them overconfident. They would decide they had him, but he'd go down with his shield or on it. He grinned, or thought his grimace was a grin. Thoughts like that kept you from shaking, imagining what could happen, or going cold in the belly.

He roared in a half-circle around the structures and found what he wanted, a sturdy little oblong building near the tipple. It looked lonely, ruined but solid, a windowless oblong about thirty feet long. He hoped its roof was as strong as its walls. It appeared to be of galvanized iron.

The Volvo came up on two wheels as he wrenched it around and alongside die gray wall; out of sight, stop. He jumped out, climbed to the roof of the car, and onto the building's roof, moving with as low a silhouette as a serpent. Now — if those two were only true to their training! And if there weren't more than two... There might have been another man hidden in the back but he doubted it.

He lay flat. You never broke the skyline in a spot like this or you were through. He heard the truck come onto the plateau and slow. They would be looking at the cloud of dust where it ended at the Volvo's last hard turn. He heard the truck approach and slow down. He took out a pack of matches, held the plastique ready, the fuse horizontal. Made himself feel better by squeezing Wilhelmina with his arm.

They had stopped. He guessed they were two hundred feet from the shack. He heard a door open. "Down," a voice veiled.

Ja, Nick thought, follow your pattern.

Another door opened, neither one slammed closed. These boys were precision workers. He heard the scuffle of feet on gravel, a growl that sounded like, "Flanken."

The fuses were twelve-second firers, add or subtract two depending on how neatly you lit the end. The scratch of the match sounded awfully loud. Nick lit the fuse — it would burn now even in a gale or under water — and rose to his knees.

His heart sank. His ears had betrayed him, the truck was at least three hundred feet away. Two men were moving out from it to circle the building from either side. They were intent on the corners ahead of them, but not so intent they weren't watching the skyline. He saw' the burp gun carried by the man on his left swing up. Nick changed his mind, flung the plastique at the burp gun carrier and dropped as it growled, a bitter rattle like fabric tearing. He heard a yell. Nine-ten-eleven-twelve-boom!

He had no illusions. The little bomb was powerful but with luck they d still be in action. Scuttling across the roof to a point well away from where he had just appeared, he peeked over the rim.

The man who had carried the MP 44 was down, squirming and moaning, the chunky weapon five feet ahead of him. Evidently he had tried to run to the right and the bomb had gone off behind him. He did not look badly damaged. Nick hoped he was shocked enough to stay dazed for a few minutes; the other man was his worry now. He was nowhere in sight.

Nick crawled forward, saw nothing. The other one must have gained the building's side. You could wait — or you could move. Nick moved as swiftly and quietly as he could. He flopped over the next rim, on the side the burp gunner had been heading for. As he had guessed — nothing. He scuttled to the rear edge of the roof, put Wilhelmina over at the same time as his head. The scarred black ground was empty.

Move! By now his man would be creeping along the wall, perhaps turning that back corner. He went to the forward angle and peeped over. He had guessed wrong.

When Bloch had seen the shape of the head on the roof and the sputtering grenade had spun toward him and Krol he had propelled himself forward. The right tactic; get away, get under, and get in — if you can't drop with your helmet toward the bomb. The blast had been surprisingly powerful, even at eighty feet. It had shaken him to the roots of his teeth.

Instead of going along the wall he had squatted at its center, watching left-right-up. Left-right-up. He was looking up when Nick looked over — for a moment each man looked into a face he would never forget.

Bloch had a Mauser balanced in his right hand and he was good with it, but he was still slightly stunned, and even if he were not, the outcome could not have been in doubt. Nick fired with the instantaneous reflexes of an athlete and the skill of the tens of thousands of rounds, burned slow-fire, rapid-fire, and in every position including hanging over roofs. He picked the pinpoint on Bloch's upturned nose where the slug would land, and the nine-millimeter slug missed it by a quarter-inch. It opened up the back of his head.

Even against the impact, Bloch fell forward, as a man usually will, and Nick saw the gaping wound. It was an unpleasant sight. He dropped from the roof and ran around the corner of the building — cautiously — to find Krol slobbering but reaching for his weapon. Nick ran forward and picked it up. Krol stared up at him, his mouth working, blood drooling from the corner of his mouth and one eye.

"Who are you?" Nick asked. Sometimes they will talk under shock. Krol didn't.

Nick searched him swiftly, finding no other weapon. An alligator-skin wallet had nothing in it but money. He went swiftly back to the dead man. He had only a driver's permit issued to John Blake. Nick said to the cadaver, "You don't look like a John Blake."

Carrying the Mauser and the burp gun he went to the truck. It appeared to have escaped damage from the blast He opened the hood and unsnapped the distributor cap and put it in his pocket In the back he found another burp gun and a metal box with eight magazines and at least two hundred extra rounds. He took two magazines, wondering why there wasn't more armament Judas was known for his love of superior firepower.

He put the guns on the rear floor of the Volvo and rolled down the hill. He had to call twice before the girls appeared at the window. "We heard shots," Booty said in a high-pitched voice. She swallowed and lowered her tones. "Are you all right?"

"Sure." He helped them out. "Our friends in the little truck won't bother us anymore. Let's get out of here before the big one comes."

Janet Olson had a small scratch on one hand from a sliver of glass. "Keep that clean till we get something to put on it," Nick ordered. "You can catch all kinds of things around here."

A droning babble in the sky drew his attention. From the southeast, the way they had come, a helicopter appeared, following the road like an exploring bee. Nick thought, Oh no! Not that — and fifty miles from nowhere with these girls!

The whirly spotted them, flew over, and went on to hover near the truck standing silently on the plateau. "Let's go!" Nick said.

As they reached the main road the big truck nosed out of the defile at the end of the valley. Nick could imagine the two-way radio conversation as the helicopter described the scene, settling to peer at "John Blake's" body. As soon as they decided...

Nick raced the Volvo away toward the northeast They had decided. At long range the truck fired at them. It sounded like a fifty-caliber, but probably was a European heavy.

With a sigh of relief Nick twisted the Volvo into the turns leading up the escarpment The big track had shown no speed — just firepower.

On the other hand, the eggbeater up there gave them all the speed they'd ever need!